My baby just put a dead shrew in her mouth

[BaylisAndHardon]

Posting in AIBU for traffic, and to ask for a hand hold while I get over this horror.

We live in an old victorian house (with many mouse holes) in the country and have a cat to manage the rodent populus, but he also sometimes brings things in . I always check the floor of the snug for anything and disinfect/scrub if he has before putting her down to play.

But this time he put it under a toy in her play pen and I didn't see it and she picked it up and put it in her mouth before I could lauch myself at her to get it out. I am horrified.

Messages of support please. Also accounts of children who have survived to adulthood after putting disgusting things in their mouths. Tell me your worst. I need to hear it.

OP, at about 9 months old, I chewed on a half dead mouse for about 10 minutes before my mum realised it wasn't a toy. It's a favourite family tale. I was fine.

When DS was about 18 months old, I discovered he'd been eating mouse droppings pretty constantly for months (long story). Also fine.

My niece regularly ate cat litter.
My nephew licked a fox poo.

@WishingHopingThinkingPraying is that you Sis? I was partial to a crunchy woodlouse as a toddler. Still alive and kicking 40-something years later!

Ds1 once picked a haribo he dropped off a drain and eat it before I could stop him.

DD ate a dandelion the other week.

Has she been wetting the bed since?

As an older child - maybe 6 or 7 I was really unhappy that bubblegum was banned in our house- this was the seventies when blowing big pink hubba bubba bubbles was the height of cool. So I had a vile habit of unpicking gum from under desks, benches etc and chewing it

My then one year old once ate up the cat sick on the kitchen floor. He's now 11.

My mother used to date me and my siblings to kiss slugs when we were children.

If we did it we would get a £1 coin!

Hopefully grown up completely normal after kissing plenty of slugs!

@Wester

My mother used to date me and my siblings to kiss slugs when we were children.

If we did it we would get a £1 coin!

Hopefully grown up completely normal after kissing plenty of slugs!

Dare me...whoops!

My mum once spent the morning mopping all the floors, whilst my younger brother napped. When he woke she brought him downstairs to play, but the phone rang so she let him toddle off with the dog whilst she quickly answered. She said she was less than a minute on the phone but in that time he had made his way into the utility, and that was where she found him, sucking on the dirty floor cloth she'd just used to wash the floors with.

Bleurgh! We do joke that my brother is never ill as a result, it's done wonders for his immunity

DS ate a slug at 10 months. Slime everywhere 🤮. He thought it funny. Although he’s never done it again since. He’s five now so survived.

I have never forgotten the horror though - 🍷🍷🍷 OP I doubt you ever will either!

Re eating slugs - Slugs (and snails) can carry lungworm, which can cause devastating illnesses in humans and pets.

My daughter once licked a snail. HTH.

My mum said she caught me with my head in the cat food bowl once 🤮

My DD once ate some poo, dipped her hand in the back of her nappy and quick as a flash sucked it off her fingers vomming not envy!
I screamed in shock, then rang 111 and cried as I asked if it would make her seriously ill and confessed to being the worst mother ever for allowing this to happen. She was absolutely fine.
She wasn’t even my PFB !

I know a little child who ate half a slug.

My sister used to eat ladybirds when she was a toddler (there was a very high population that summer for whatever reason).

My daughter used to love to stuff handfuls of sand and dirt into her mouth.

She’ll be okay.

My sister once asked me why the hell I'd given her 2 year old chocolate 10 minutes before dinner. I hadn't. It was her own shit.

If it helps- MULTIPLE studies have shown that exposure to bacteria at a very young age (before age 2) reduces the risk of childhood leukaemia later on in childhood. There is very significant and protective effect on the immune system of being exposed to bacteria and kids who attend nursery with other kids also show this protective effect sue to exposure to other kids germs. Now obviously you don’t want to go around eating shrews lol but it really does show that it’s not healthy to be bleaching everything in sight and your kids immune system will be super strong now!!!! 😆

This is hilarious.
My son once put his own poo in his mouth which had exploded out of a nappy.
He also once actually licked the pavement in a not so good area of San Francisco. He's currently upstairs doing maths homework non the worse for wear.

My parents house was pebble dashed and I had a habit of picking the stones off the house and sucking the pebbles as a toddler 🙈

@Bubbletrouble43

Dd1 put a slug in her mouth in the garden once 😱

That’s actually very dangerous. Slugs eat rat droppings which can carry deadly germs. There was a very sad case a few years ago of a boy who ate a slug on a dare, and died a few days or weeks later.

When my daughter (who turned 17 yesterday) was little I asked what she was doing while crouched down looking at the grass. She stood up and spat out a slug 🤢 never felt so ill in my life, she just wanted to see what they tasted like??!! Needless to say she's alive and doing well!

All this slug eating 😱

A man in Australia was paralysed and then died of eating a slug, he got rat lungworm.

I ate sheep poo as a baby. My mother is convinced I have liver fluke to this day. (I’m 50).

Not eaten but Ass. Head once asked me to go and deal with it and pointed to a little girl on the playground. She had a small group -crowd- of children around her taking turns to look in her pocket. The Ass. Head had thought she had brought some small toy to school like a Sylvanian family( not allowed) but oh no. I casually asked if I could see. She had brought a dead mouse to school in her pocket because it was interesting and she thought other people might like to see it.
It turned out she had found it under the fridge at home. I suggested I might find a place to put it while she went to wash her hands and go back to class. How I kept a straight face I don’t know. I thought it was hysterical. She was a quirky little girl and was quite serious about it being interesting. We became firm friends after that and she used to seek me out to tell me things and sometimes come to my room. At the end of Yr 6 she came and gave me a beautiful card she had made and a hug and said she would miss me. I later worked with her sister and brothers.
The Ass. Head told me she asked me because I lived in the country and she thought I could deal with it. She wasn’t a hundred per cent sure if it was a toy or real. The following year I sent her a funny card at Christmas with a mouse on it and added some holly.

OP At least she didn’t eat it. A story you can embarrass her with when she is a teenager!

I hesitate to share this, but... there was an episode which we refer to in this house as The Attack of The Dread Pirate Poo Beard.

Three words: bare bottom time.

I have never felt so ill.